


can't promise that things won't be broken

by greekdemigod



Series: Roisa Deadly Sins Week [2]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/F, Roisa Deadly Sins Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 20:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10543736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: Soulmates are destiny. Luisa has a thing or two to say to that.[Soulmate au + sloth.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Two for two so far! Let's hope I can keep up the streak for the rest of the week.
> 
> That said, I feel like I wanted to write so much more?? and flesh things out more?? So maybe one day I'll get back to this and expand it, so that it makes more sense and the slightly different universe gets explained some more.

As she noisily pulls the door closed behind her, Luisa breathes in deeply to try to subdue her anger. There is a hint of rain in the morning air, there are dark clouds gathering overhead—that is uncommon enough in the ever sunny Miami that it startles her out of the furiously-spinning thoughts.

Instead of going back inside and possibly facing her father again, she decides to risk going out without a coat. Her clothes won’t stay on long where she is going, anyway. She might as well show up drenched.

Her mind has gone back to thinking about the highly unpleasant breakfast conversation she had with her family when the first rain drops spatter against her. She has already come to regret making her goodbye to Rafael sound so much like _‘I hope you never return’_ by the time the rain comes down hard and fast, cold sleets of it washing over her.

She really doesn’t dislike her brother _that_ much. Most times.

Ignoring the billboards advertising products geared towards soulmates or insurance going at two-for-one, as well as the promotional posters for a new television show about a girl who has not one but two soulmates — _and gasp, they’re brothers!_ — Luisa huddles into her sweater and rushes along.

She rubs at the red line on her wrist. Tired of her nervous habit, she resolutely sticks her hands in the pockets of her jeans intent on not thinking about the mark anymore, but she can feel the warmth of it through the fabric, scorching into her thigh.

There are days when she can better stomach the world, but today is not one of them. It doesn’t help that the argument of the morning left her with no appetite, or that there has been an assault on her senses since she woke up, a presence pleading to be let in.

Luisa knows her soulmate can feel her bad mood, but she just wants to be alone for the rest of her walk, rotten and sodden as it might have become.

Her soulmate relents by the time she arrives; her presence becomes a mere brushing against her, like the touch of silk or velvet. There, but holding back, respectfully. Luisa lifts her hand to knock at the door and while she waits, she opens her psychic connection just a breath.

The scent of roses is all around her. Sunlight dapples across the crown of leaves of the tree beneath her window. A worn paperback novel crinkles beneath her fingers.

Just like that, she cuts the connection between them again. It takes some of the gnawing hunger away, lightens the headache that seems ever-present, but most importantly of all, Jane will be fully gone now for a while.

Right in time, too. Rose smiles as she opens the door and lets her in.

* * *

“You could’ve called a cab,” Rose remarks to her while she runs a towel roughly through her hair. The friction of it feels rather nice, so all Luisa does in return is lean her head into it and allow a small smile to finally take root. “You know I like to get you wet myself.”

“Yes, I do know.” The smile widens to a grin, crooked and sly. “Maybe I should just lie back and let you.”

It takes a few minutes longer before her hair is sufficiently dry for Rose’s tastes. Then she stays away a remarkably long time to toss the towel in her laundry basket. Luisa knows, even before her girlfriend returns wearing that particular look on her face, what is about to happen.

“Not today,” she sighs as she lets herself fall forward onto the bed. Muffled by a mouthful of sheets, she repeats, “Not today. Please.”

Slender fingers card through her hair. Shivers start from the crown of her head, down her neck, shivering all the way through her. Luisa wishes it could be like this always, just her and Rose, wearing nothing but sweatpants and T-shirts, and enjoying nothing else but each other’s company.

With another sigh, infused with quite a bit of melodrama, she rolls onto her back and stares up at blue eyes she has come to love so much, even though for the longest time they brought a decidedly eerie chill to her chest. Something had been dead inside that gaze.

Now, of course, she knows why.

The thin black mark on her wrist is one she has seen many times. It looks wrong, still and dead like that, while simultaneously providing Luisa a perverse satisfaction. She should not exult in Rose having lost her soulmate, but it freed up the woman for her to claim all for her own.

As if the gods out there can sense her thoughts, her own mark pulses with pain—a pain that has a twin on the other side of the world.

“Fine,” she breathes. “Say what you need to say. It’s not like I haven’t had enough lectures today. Please, by all means-”

“Babe.” Rose utters the usual term of endearment sternly, to snap her out of it. “You should stop running.”

Luisa huffs; a pluck of her hair floats up with it, then falls limply across her face again. Before she can stop her, and despite the things Rose is about to tell her _again_ , it gets brushed away ever so gently. The fingers settle against her cheek after, curling beneath her jaw.

This isn’t fair.

“Your family is right. Emilio pays an exorbitant amount for you, because you _refuse_ to chase your soulmate. She is out there, Luisa. Your Jane is out there somewhere.”

“Rose, I _love_ you.”

They have had this conversation so many times, but it’s a first for Luisa to express her feelings so directly, so clearly, and as a counterargument at that. She would be smug if her heart wasn’t bared on her sleeve right now, examined by a Rose that has gone still as a statue.

None of what Luisa expected comes out. Instead, Rose quietly murmurs, “You can’t know what love feels like. Not with me.”

“Isn’t what we have nice? We have fun together, don’t we?” Luisa has clambered upright, and panic has seized her. She can’t quite breathe right. The statements leave her mouth hurried and high-pitched. She squeezes her eyes shut tightly and fists her hands in the sheets. “Why does it suddenly matter to you?”

“It has always mattered to me. If Jane was... but she isn’t. I don’t want to spend the rest of your life with a woman that has someone else in her head. Not that it would be long, because it’s _killing_ you.”

Luisa keeps her eyes shut, feels her chest heave with her struggling breaths. “There have been reports of Sloths surviving up to sixty years.” _Sloth_. A term for those inactive in the search for their soulmate. Treated worse than those that have lost their soulmates or don’t have one to begin with, because it defies all that their religion stands for, all that the gods have created for them.

Your soulmate is your destiny, and all that crap.

Luisa has never believed in it, but Rose has. Fervently.

She finally opens her eyes, to see her girlfriend look back at her with such _sadness_. It chokes her.

“Luisa, it’s because I care for you that I’m telling you, at least give it a chance.”

* * *

The rain feels more appropriate now. Luisa pulls the coat she has borrowed more tightly around herself, but the cold has seeped into her already. She is viciously scratching at her mark, as if that will change anything.

She knows she won’t do it. There are the usual reasons; Jane lives too far away, in a place that will never be her beloved Miami; she is so boring, preferring a quiet night in with a book; has she ever had a wild streak in her life?; she has grown up with too many stories, raised free-spirited by a mother that had defied her own mark, taught of such things as  _choice_ and  _freedom_.

And one more: Rose, no matter what she says, lets her back in every time.

Luisa whistles a dreary tune as she walks up the driveway to her house. Rafael is already on his flight to go visit Petra when she gets in. Her father calls another nasty remark after her.

The finality that sounded in Rose’s voice echoes in the mind space that should be inhabited by all her soulmate’s sensory experiences, but just like those, she ignores it.

She'll choose her own destiny.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
